The GAA has published its Annual report and Accounts for 2021 which shows a strong bounce back from the financial tsunami that hit the accounts in 2020.
The report though is about more than just the numbers and we will be looking in detail at some of the key elements over the coming days.
The functioning of the country’s largest community organisation though is fuelled by the revenue that it brings in at the central, provincial and county levels over the course of a year.
The headline revenue figure for the eleven months to 30 September 2021 climbed from €50.4 million in the twelve months before to €87.4 million.
€29.7 million of this was in state funding across different streams but there were major uplifts in gate receipts, from €3.6 million to €11.6 million, and in sponsorship and media payments from €9.1 million to €26.9 million.
These figures account for two all Ireland Championships, albeit only one with anything approaching the potential audiences of a regular full-season. By way of comparison, 2019 saw record gate receipts of €36.0 million as part of overall revenues of €118 million.
The early indicators from the return to full capacity are good with the average attendance figure over the first two weekends of action in the Allianz League this season up from just over 7,000 two years ago, just before the pandemic hit, to over 10,000.
Provinces and individual counties almost all recorded surpluses which left a consolidated surplus for the whole association of €13.5 million.
It has been quite a year,” said Director General Tom Ryan writing in his introduction to the report.
“Unfortunately for the second successive year our affairs, and our lives, were overshadowed by the Covid pandemic. The Association, and the wider world, may still have been mired in Covid, but our 2021 felt different in a lot of respects from the one that preceded it.”
“The shock of the initial impact in March 2020 was replaced by the weary grind of sustained restrictions in 2021. Intermittent intervals of hope that things might be about to improve were successively dashed. In the midst of it all the GAA again proved resilient. We were careful and cautious, but we played such competitions and matches as we could. We kept our members and patrons safe, and as the year closed we began to re-emerge.”
“Such was the pace of change that, now, as we get reaccustomed to training, playing and watching matches in normal circumstances the bleakest days of last year already seem quite distant. And that’s welcome. It’s surprising how quickly we can get back to the familiar routines and patterns of life and of the GAA.”
Sport for Business Perspective
Over the coming days, we will look in greater detail at aspects of the report and the accounts that deserve a longer look than in a single news story but for now, this was a positive day and a welcome marker of how we are recovering as a sporting nation.
